native level

[李白]

"It is amazing that he was able to learn Mandarin to well-educated native standard after just two years"

I think its possible. But did they present details of how he did it? We could learn something.

Harold Williams of New Zealand was another polyglot of that error. Dr Harold’s method is interesting. His father was a minister and Harold knew the bible off by heart. His hobby as a school boy, was buying second hand bibles in different languages and deciphering them. This is a deductive learning approach which is also suggested by Tim Ferriss. To practice (activate) the language he would go to the wharf and talk to sailors who were native speakers. Obviously this method won’t work with Chinese unless you knew the characters. After doing this for a few languages apparently his brain adapted and he started to learn even faster. Later, apparently Harold mastered the “Cuneiform inscriptions and a book of 12,000 Chinese characters”. I suppose he could read his bible after that. Although that sounds like a lot of characters since HSK old 11 requires around 2800 and natives know about 4000. Apart from the deductive approach he also owned his learning process which seems to be important if one where to get to native educated in 2 years.

I have not meet any students of Chinese who really own and are creative with their learning process. Most students abdicate the learning process to the school and try to speak as much as they can. This is not innovative and will not lead to a native educated level in any period of time. For one it does nothing to try and reduce accent.

[Meng Lelan]

Chief123, in all honesty you'd be better served by starting a new topic about your actual circumstances, or using the one you already started. This one is more relevant to blind 19th-Century German linguists.

I didn't know that all 19th century German linguists were blind.

Anyway roddy and I would love to see a new thread opened up about Chinese braille.

[rezaf]

Somehow the characters above the first 5000 tend to be very useless characters, for example a character for some kind of food from some minority group from some dynasty, so I don't think wasting your time on 12000 characters would make you highly educated. For me the definition of being educated(not highly educated) is mastering about 40000 words and phrases plus memorizing at least 1000 poems and of course memorizing all those TCM stuff like herbs, prescriptions, etc from my major, also carefully reading at least 20 books that I have bought about Chinese history, literature and philosophy. After that I need to be able to use all those things that I have memorized. That's why I'm saying 2 years is not enough for flipping the pages of all these books, let alone memorizing and being able to use them even if someone is genius and has a super memory. I guess it's at least 10~15 years of hard work for a normal smart person.

[anonymoose]

So what are you going to use those 1000 poems for?

[rezaf]

So what are you going to use those 1000 poems for?

Mostly because I just like to memorize poems. Also most poets I have seen, either Chinese or Persian, tell me that after memorizing a lot of poems one can naturally start writing poems. Memorizing helps me to understand things deeply in a way that I can never do by just reading and thinking.

Edit: But probably it is the least important among all the other things I intend to do.

[skylee]

Also most poets I have seen, either Chinese or Persian, tell me that after memorizing a lot of poems one can naturally start writing poems.

I don't know about this. But I am sure after memorising a lot of poems, one can recite a lot of poems.

[rezaf]

I don't think it is just limited to reciting. Memorizing and contemplating is different from 死记. I don't know about poetry but in music(my previous major) this method helped me a lot. Also in martial arts people practice and study certain forms for many years and that's how in a real fight they can naturally use their 功夫, although in a real fight everything that happens is unpredictable and new. In my recent project I memorized quite a few chapters of 道德经 and all I can say is that although I had read them before now I can understand them better than before and in my life when something happens I can naturally remember those words and understand things better. So memorizing can be very beneficial if it is accompanied by thinking.

[skylee]

Then you are very talented.

[anonymoose]

Yes. Memorising one poem is enough of a challenge for me.

[chevil]

No, it's true, memorizing poems helps you write poetry. It's the same with most skills of this sort, e.g. chess, one memorizes a lot of things and then the brain (you don't have to be super smart for this, it's a natural skill that most people possess) naturally starts to process it and pick out the patterns subconsciously. It's the same with math, one method of learning math is essentially by memorizing proofs and theorems; at first it's hard, but once you get to be older and wiser you don't have to expend effort on memorizing them anymore, and you can write your own. In theory.

But anyway, this whole thing about somebody acquiring a language to the point of being well-educated in two years ... well, I just have difficulty buying it, even if the person is bright, brilliant, a genius and hard working. I don't know if this has been said before, so I may just be blindly spouting off, but how long does it take to raise up a well-educated native speaker? At least ten to twelve years, if the child is *very* bright. Otherwise, eighteen to twenty two years. Not even talking about well-educated (I'm essentially equating education with literacy here) but native-like fluency, how long does it take for a child to acquire their mother tongue? How old does a person have to be before you can't really detect anymore from their use of language that they're a child? Furthermore, children learn language faster than adults! So ... I just don't buy it.

~~

[daofeishi]

We've probably debated this topic to death, so I'm sorry I'm bringing up an old thread. It's just that I just found an article that made me think of this thread, and that has some bearing on the point I was trying to make. I wrote earlier on that

I've heard many claims about people becoming native-like fluent in one or two years, but in my experience, such claims always come from secondary sources, and usually from people who are in no position to verify or falsify the claims. I have never seen or heard direct evidence of people who have studied a language for 1-2 years and becoming fluent, except in the cases where the person already spoke a language closely related to the target language.

but was told about counterexamples to this, e.g.

I believe, but am not sure, the former U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, is one such example with less than two years living in Taiwan but has the ability to speak at quite a high level debating complex foreign policy and economic issues.

someone even chiming in with

[...] And yes you are right about Huntsman.

So I had a bout of "that's what I thought" when I came across this article about John Huntsman's Chinese. The clip they are talking about is here. I don't really intend to bash Huntsman's language skills, even attempting to learn a foreign language is commendable. However, I think this does go to show how skeptical we should be about claims of "fluency" in the media. Especially when the claims come from secondary or tertiary sources.

[gato]

Picking on Huntsman again

[daofeishi]

Have people been picking on him before?

[rezaf]

His sentence is not that wrong. I think that article is too biased. He says "我很想你做我的副美国总统" which is completely clear and the only thing he should do is to put 副 after 美国 to make it correct. His accent is also not that bad. Probably he is not very advanced but that level is quite good for a politician.

[realmayo]

I'm convinced it's just one of those phrases that trips off the tongue of lots of people: whereas they'd say So-and-so "speaks Spanish" or French, they'd say So-and-so "speaks fluent Chinese".

[yersi]

.

[gato]

Have people been picking on him before?

Yeah, he's a favorite here.

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/30784-does-us-ambassador-jon-huntsman-speak-chinese/

Does US ambassador Jon Huntsman speak Chinese?

[rezaf]

Oh I just watched the video in that previous discussion, that article is not biased. How 不要脸 to say that his accent is too 北方 to be understood by 杭州 folks!

[daofeishi]

Yeah, he's a favorite here.

Oh right, I even posted in that thread myself

[OneEye]

But anyway, this whole thing about somebody acquiring a language to the point of being well-educated in two years ... well, I just have difficulty buying it, even if the person is bright, brilliant, a genius and hard working. I don't know if this has been said before, so I may just be blindly spouting off, but how long does it take to raise up a well-educated native speaker? At least ten to twelve years, if the child is *very* bright. Otherwise, eighteen to twenty two years. Not even talking about well-educated (I'm essentially equating education with literacy here) but native-like fluency, how long does it take for a child to acquire their mother tongue? How old does a person have to be before you can't really detect anymore from their use of language that they're a child? Furthermore, children learn language faster than adults! So ... I just don't buy it.

There are some problems here. Assuming the the person aiming for a level equivalent to that of a "well-educated native speaker" is himself a well-educated native speaker of his own native tongue, then we're not talking about having to completely re-educate him in a new language. We're just talking about language skills. Of course there is a lot of culture to be learned too, but someone who can discuss political science or anthropological theory in English simply needs to words to do so in Chinese. They don't need to learn these subjects over again.

What's more, children certainly do not learn language faster than adults. That's just absurd. My nephew could say 15 words by the time he was 15 months old. If it took me that long to learn 15 words, I'd just quit. As would nearly everyone else, I'm sure. If it took me as long as it takes a Taiwanese kid to go from reading kids' books to reading newspapers (10+ years), I'd have thrown in the towel a long time ago. It takes kids as long as it does to reach a "well-educated native level" because so much time is required to learn concepts other than the language.